retribution13
by minmb82
Summary: retribution13


**Chapter 13**

_Koira, 16 Demaa, 4405, Faey Orthodox Calendar_

_ Tuesday, 25 March 2019 Terran Standard Calendar_

_ Koira, 16 Demaa, year 1330 of the 97__th__ Generation, Karinne Historical Reference Calendar_

_KMS _Tianne_, Orbiting Prakka 21-C, Andromeda_

With deliberate slowness, as if procrastination might change what was coming, Jason allowed Mai and Dera to slide the outer robe of his formal robes over his shoulders. Dera held it in place as Mai started wrapping the red sash around his waist, and he could feel the extra weight of the garment on his shoulders. Even though spiders were microscopic, the fact that there were nearly 16,000,000 of them infused into the fabric of the outer robe, inside the lining between the inner and outer layers, added weight to it. Nearly two konn of weight. The garment was carefully made to carry the spiders, but didn't require any special material or shielding to protect them from the ionic field technology the Benga employed to short out weapons carried through a security station.

The reason was surprisingly simple; the spiders themselves had no power supply. Without a battery or power pack, the spiders were too small to be shorted out by the ionic field unless they were powered up, the field just didn't have enough material to interact with to short out the system. The spiders were too _small _ to be shorted out by the field. So long as they weren't activated, the tests Myleena ran showed that they could pass through the ionic field without being destroyed. So, so long as they didn't increase the power on the broadcast node to reach the spiders and activate them, the spiders could be carried through an ionic field security station safely.

He let his guards tie his sash, the red sash of a married man, his expression stoic and his thoughts heavy. He was going over the plan, over and over in his mind, making sure that he knew every step of it, so that he always knew where he was going, where to go next, and what his contingency option was if his path was blocked. Kraal and Miaari had designed a highly involved plan that covered virtually any possibility, and gave him 19 separate places to go to get off the planet, from beacons to the frigate that was already on E Chaio and lurking under the waters about 50 kathra offshore. And if all of those failed, he had 15 separate safe locations within 20 kathra of their capitol building where their sensor network couldn't find him, places he could go and hide while they came up with a new plan to get him offworld. He had multiple options, but all of them depended on one thing…him getting out of the building. That was his major responsibility, and what he'd spent most of his time training to prepare to do. All he had to do was get out of the building. Once he did, the plan took over, and it would get him home.

He just had to get out of the building.

Dera smoothed the lapels of the outer robe and then patted them, then she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek gently before she stepped back. He turned and looked at himself in the mirror, and saw that the robes looked just like his normal ones, just with a few tiny exceptions. He wasn't wearing his _oye_ wood medallion, the one the _shaman_ gave him, because there was too much risk he might lose it. He also wasn't wearing his gestalt, because there was too much risk he might lose it. Unlike the tactical built into his arms, a standard gestalt could be taken off of him relatively easily. The robes were new, so they were immaculately clean, arrayed perfectly upon him to look quite nice, and fit him just so. His hair had been cut just before he put on the robes, so it too was neat and orderly.

The one thing that looked different was the face staring back at him. It was wearing such a grim expression that he almost didn't recognize himself.

But, there was no reason to avoid this. He was ready, and that meant that it was time to go.

He didn't send, he just looked over to Aya, and gave a single nod. She nodded in return and turned towards the bow of the ship. _The Grand Duke is ready to depart,_ she informed Palla, who was on the bridge.

_Understood,_ she answered, her thought shivering with concern and worry and fear, which was squelched by her discipline. Palla knew what this mission entailed, and she did not like it one bit. But she had her orders, and she had her duty. _We'll be under way in just a moment._

He had to resist communing with Jyslin back home, with Dahnai, with Symone's interface…with anyone. He'd already said his goodbyes, and he didn't want them here while he prepared for the mission, fearing that they would distract him. All he could do was sigh and step away from the mirror, sliding his hands into his sleeves and grabbing the little straps sewn into them so he could completely cover the skin of his hands and arms with the blue material of his robe. He walked over to a window in the executive stateroom and watched as the gas giant started to slowly rotate out of view, as the ship turned and prepared to depart for the rendezvous point. That point was four sectors away from E Chaio, where the _Tianne_ would launch the jump-capable civilian transport that would complete the journey utilizing a hyperspace catapult to get the ship there in real time, which was already in position and hidden by Kimdori SCM. That transport was a Kirri ship, one of their jump-capable civilian passenger ships, and was chosen specifically because it carried no technology the Syndicate could capture. Its engines weren't even real-time jump engines. When it jumped out, it would suffer a relativity delay that would cause it to reach its destination in 3,317 years. Its destination was Oasis, in the Strands of Trelle.

That was why the ship would be unmanned. It was effectively an expendable asset, though Myleena was going to track the ship as it entered Flat Space to see how intergalactic space effected its relativity delay, and see how long the ship could stay in hyperspace before the engine failed and it dropped out. So the ship would serve as a scientific experiment once it served its purpose.

He stood at the window for the entire trip to the Stargate, until he had to sit down for the jump restraints. Once they were through the Stargate, the ship turned and almost immediately jumped out in mode two. The ship would cruise in for 37 minutes in mode two to reach the catapult location, which gave Jason more time to think to go over the escape plan, as well as go over his negotiation points with the Board. He _was_ there to negotiate, and if he could get a peace treaty out of them, he would.

It barely seemed like they'd been in hyperspace for two minutes when the ship dropped back into normal space at a location about 60 light years away from E Chaio, dropping into a zone hidden from Syndicate long range sensors by Kimdori SCM. The catapult was already here and waiting, tended by two Kimdori destroyers, and the ship dropped back into normal space oriented so he could see them from the window.

_Jason, we're here,_ Palla informed him. _You're clear to depart whenever you're ready._

_ I'll never be ready, but that's no excuse,_ he answered reluctantly. _Is the catapult active?_

_ Yes._

_ Alright._ He turned and regarded the 12 guards in the room. His usual four, Aya, Mai, Kaera, Hara, Deila, Uma, Lelanna, and Brae, who were often attached to him when four guards weren't enough, so he knew them fairly well. He gave a sigh and stepped up to them, then reached out and took Aya's hands. _Yes, I'll be careful,_ he sent openly to them. _And thank you. All of you. For everything that you've done for me and my family. The House of Karinne would not be where it is if it weren't for you, and I consider myself lucky beyond measure to have known you. It's been an honor, my friends._

_ Don't send like that, Jason,_ Aya replied, her eyes nearly shimmering. _Never accept the inevitable. It simply turns it into a self-fulfilling prophecy._

_ I can't leave this room without telling you how much I love and respect you, girls,_ he told them, looking at their faces. _You and those who couldn't be here with us. You're not just my protectors. You're my advisors, you're my teachers, you're my voice of reason and caution to rein in my wilder notions, and you are my _friends_. And it comforts me beyond measure to know that if I don't come back, that my family will be in your care._ He put his hand on Aya's cheek. _May you forever walk in Trelle's garden._

She gave him a look, and a tear formed in the corner of her eye. She knew what it meant for him to say something like that, since he didn't believe in Trelle and considered it a sin against God to invoke her name. She leaned forward and kissed him gently on the lips, then stepped back. He walked down the line, receiving a kiss from all of them, and when he finished with Kaera, he gave a cleansing breath and stepped past them and out the stateroom hatch. He did not look back.

He could not look back.

As he requested, there was no one in the landing bay to bid him farewell, just two ground crew who gave him a salute with serious expressions as he walked towards the Kirri transport. Like all Kirri designs, it blended practicality with style smoothly, creating an aesthetically pleasing ship with clean lines and elegant, narrow wings for aerodynamic stability when operating in an atmosphere. The transport was the size of a 767 passenger jet, but only had room inside to carry 52 passengers and two pilots because of the size of the jump engines. The engines and other systems took up nearly 90% of the volume of the ship, which made the passenger compartment noticeably cramped. Even the cockpit was cramped, forcing him to fight a bit with his robes to step over the center console between the two cockpit seats and get into the pilot's seat. He settled himself as best he could and strapped in, then he began preflight. The transport was in no way refitted for modern technology, so it had manual controls and a flight stick. He'd downloaded all the necessary data to fly the ship, so he started the engines with confident movements as he pressed the right buttons in the right sequence.

Once the transport was fully up and ready to go, he blew out his breath and activated the gravband comm. "This is Karinne One," he called to the ship's traffic controller. "Preflight complete, ready to depart."

_"You are cleared to depart, Karinne One,"_ Palla's voice answered. _"May Trelle, Aris, and Demir watch over you."_

"Be back soon," he said, then he killed the transmission and picked the transport up off the deck with a gentle shift of the altitude control slide. He turned the ship slowly, getting a feel for how sensitive the stick was in this ship, then he slowly inched his way out of the bay. Once he was clear, he changed course and accelerated, heading for the catapult. He used the time approaching it to double check the pre-programmed jump coordinates, then ensured that the jump engines were charged and ready. "Karinne One ready to jump," he called to the _Tianne_. "Is the catapult ready?"

_"Catapult is in active mode and standing by,"_ Palla answered.

"Alright then, let's see what this thing can do," he said as he slowed the ship to a top within the ring of the catapult, then he took hold of the hyperspace jump control. He gripped it enough to close the handle switch, then he put his thumb on the side button, both of which were required to unlock the control and enable the ship to jump. "Here goes nothing," he muttered under his breath, then he pulled the control back, which activated the jump engines, and a press of a button on the other side of the console with his other hand caused the ship to jump out of normal space. The view in front of him snapped as if someone pulled at the fabric of space to stretch what he saw away from a fixed point in front of the ship, then there was blur of light as the ship jumped into hyperspace. A quick check of the primary HUD showed him the catapult had worked, he was in a real time jump that would get him to E Chaio in about 44 seconds, so he released the hyperspace jump control and allowed it to return to its original position. He didn't touch the control stick while the ship was in hyperspace, since the controls were locked out by the computer while executing a jump, and the ship dropped back into normal space on its own, going on the data inputted into the navigation jump computer.

They were already here waiting. A single Syndicate civilian transport was sitting about 400 kathra dead ahead, exactly as negotiated. He took hold of the controls and started the ship forward as he activated the comm to emulate shortrange Syndicate comm. "Syndicate ship, this is Confederation Transport One, requesting docking instructions."

"Confederation Transport, this is Syndicate Transport. Come alongside our vessel and align your side hatch with ours. It doesn't matter which side. We'll extend a docking clamp when your ship is at a full stop."

"Understood," he answered.

The Syndicate transport was three times the size of the Kirri transport, so Jason approached it slowly and carefully. He lined up the port hatch with the hatch he saw on their ship, and then a cylindrical force field extended out from the Syndicate ship and touched the hull around the hatch. The ship shivered a little form the contact with the docking force field—a clever use of a hard shield, Jason could admit—and unbuckled his seat restraints. He then enabled the autopilot's return course, setting it so the ship would execute its flight plan once the Syndicate ship moved about three kathra away. The exact distance was measured in Kirri _ara_, and converted to about 3.116 kathra, or about 2.8 kilometers or 1.6 miles.

He struggled out of the cockpit, smoothed his robes, and then walked to the hatch. He prepared for a potential trick by putting a telekinetic shield around himself—the ship had no sensors to tell him if the area inside the docking tunnel was pressurized, then he took a deep breath and hit the hatch control. The space in the tube wasn't pressurized, but it was sealed, so there was a rush of air that startled him a tiny bit as the air inside the transport equalized the pressure with the vacuum that had been within the docking tunnel. He had to step down a considerable distance to get his feet down onto the hard shield, and he had to walk carefully towards the transport because the hard shield was as slippery as ice. The far hatch opened, causing another rush of air as the greater pressure inside the Syndicate ship equalized to the tunnel and the Kirri transport, and he saw a Benga female standing at the hatch, wearing a Syndicate Navy uniform. She knelt down and reached out a hand towards him when he reached the far side, since the hatch was almost over his head, and she pulled him up and onto the deck. "Welcome aboard, your Excellency," the rather attractive female said in Benga, looking down at him. "If you would step into the passenger compartment and take a seat, we can get underway."

"Thank you," he replied, stepping inside. The ship was almost completely empty, which surprised him a little bit. There were two Benga guards sitting at the rear of the passenger compartment, and the female was one of two pilots in the cockpit. They'd installed a chair his size for him right by the hatch, and he stepped over to it and sat down after gathering up his robes. "Uh, your Excellency, is there any way you can inform the crew of your ship that they can close the hatch?"

"There's no one in it, madam," he informed her calmly. "So you can disengage the docking clamp. You won't hurt anyone if that ship decompresses."

"The ship will remain here?" she asked.

"It will return on autopilot," he answered with a shake of his head. "Warn your pilot that once he moves far enough away from the ship, the autopilot will engage and the ship will jump out of the system."

"I'm the pilot, your Excellency," she smiled. "And I'll keep that in mind. There is a lavatory in the back of the transport built for species of your size if necessary. A galley holding refreshments is right there, you may help yourself," she told him, pointing. "The trip to E Chaio will take approximately five divisions, your Excellency."

"I'm aware, Captain," he told her respectfully.

He was honestly surprised there weren't more Benga on the transport, but after just a few minutes, he was justified in his suspicions over how this long trip in was going to go. Both the guards in the back of the transport were telepaths, and he could feel them very delicately, very carefully probing the edges of his consciousness, trying to unobtrusively test his mental defenses. Both of them were very good, very well trained, but Jason was trained by one of the most skilled telepaths alive, so he could detect everything they were doing. Both the Benga woman and her co-pilot were also telepaths, but they weren't trying to probe him…they were probably telepaths just so he couldn't eavesdrop on their surface thoughts. They were obviously told not to talk to him, because the two pilots talked only about ship operations as they accelerated to a sublight cruising speed that would get them to E Chaio in about six hours, then they settled into a comfortable silence once the autopilot was engaged.

In all, he was a bit pleasantly surprised. So far, the Benga were adhering to the negotiated plan and were behaving. But he also knew that wasn't going to last.

He passed the time on the way in not going over the plan, but thinking of nothing. He used the meditation techniques the _shaman_ taught him to calm him, clear his mind, and focus him on the task at hand. He did so for a simple reason; just in case they had a telepath he couldn't sense that _could_ hear his surface thoughts. This way, he gave away nothing, not even personal information, for there were no thoughts there for a telepath to overhear.

The nice side effect of mediation like that was that he couldn't really feel the passage of time, so it seemed like it was just a few minutes after he began that he felt the ship start to decelerate, and that snapped him out of his meditative state. He leaned over and looked through the forward windows of the cockpit and saw the gray and green planet of E Chaio filling it. "We're about to execute a controlled descent into the atmosphere, your Excellency, please remain seated and with your lap restraint buckled," the Benga woman called loudly. "We should land at the Executive building in about thirty measures."

"Thank you, Captain," Jason answered in a strong, clear voice.

The pilot was good. The ship only shuddered a little as it eased down into the atmosphere, and that ended when the ship descended into thicker air and established a shallow descent vector down towards the megacity below, a city that spanned an entire continent. Jason prepared himself mentally for what was to come as the ship came in, slowed more and more, and then he felt the ship's landing skids extend. Moments later, he felt it land.

He unbuckled and stood up as the Benga pilot, three times taller than him, stepped past him and opened the hatch. He stepped in front of it as it opened, and he saw a contingent of about thirty Benga, some in civilian garb and some in uniforms, standing on the edge of the platform waiting. The stairs were Benga sized, so he had to carefully navigate them while wearing his robes, which made him look a tiny bit undignified as the procession approached him. When he reached the bottom, he smoothed out his robes and tucked his hands back into his sleeves, returning to a dignified posture, as the Benga procession reached him. "Your Grace, I am Bol Ven Ar Mek, main executive in charge of appointments and scheduling for the Board," he said, almost smugly, and it surprised Jason a bit he knew the proper way to address him, given there was no such thing as a Duke in the Syndicate. Sha Ra must have included that blurb in her reports when she negotiated with the Confederation. He was certainly proud of his position. "It is my honor to escort you to the Board Room, where they are awaiting you."

"Thank you, your Excellency," Jason returned in a calm voice. "Please lead the way."

The uniformed guards formed up around Jason and the five government officials, and they started towards the large doors at the far side of the landing pad. The Benga had to walk very slowly because of Jason's short legs, almost looking like they were shuffling along, and he felt several feathery brushes against his mind as the telepaths among them carefully reached out towards him, trying to test his defenses without giving themselves away. He didn't react to it, he simply maintained his towering mental defenses that would give them no way in and continued to walk. The doors at the end of the pad opened to a long passage, with guards standing at stations about every two hundred shakra or so. He was led into the building and quite a ways in, passing through four different ionic field arches. He didn't hesitate walking through the first of them, and he made no indication of his relief when the tactical gestalt did not go offline. The shielding had worked! He had to walk through three more of them on the way to the end of the hallway, where the doors of another elevator were set into a wall. They encountered no other Benga, which told him that they hallways had been cleared for his arrival.

"Was your journey here acceptable, your Grace?" the executive asked as they stood before the elevator doors, waiting for them to open.

"It was actually quite pleasant. My complements to the pilot of the transport, your Excellency. She was quite skilled, and provided me a relaxing and comfortable trip."

"I'll be sure to mention that to the Board, your Grace," he replied smoothly as they boarded the elevator. Jason turned to face the doors, more than keenly aware of the Benga surrounding him as the elevator started to ascend, going up about twenty floors or so before it slowed to a stop.

He'd seen the building plans. He knew where he was. He closed his eyes and focused himself, and then opened them when the elevator doors slid open. They stepped into an antechamber, and he knew that the doors on the far side opened into the Board Room. He knew that this room was filled with sensors and detection systems, and this was the moment of truth. He walked at the same pace as before as he knew he was being intensely scanned, but he was confident. The Kimdori had this scanner tech, they'd tested their SCM extensively against it, and they knew it worked. So he walked sedately, at a stately pace behind the chamberlain—that was more or less what he was—until they were at the doors leading inside the heart of Syndicate government. And since there were no alarms going off or no guards trying to grab him, that told me that their sensors had picked up neither his tactical nor the spiders.

He was in. Now he just had to execute the next phase, as Kraal did as well. If Kraal held to the plan, he would increase the broadcast node to full power five minutes after Jason entered the room, so he had to stall the Board for fifteen minutes minimum. It would take the spiders ten minutes to get out of his robes and disperse into the room, mainly into the air.

But he didn't think about that. He didn't think about the plan, he only thought of trying to get a peace treaty out of the Board. That was why he was here. It was the reason he was here. And he had to keep that firmly in mind.

The doors opened, and the chamberlain led him into the Board Room, the one place in the Syndicate where every Benga wanted to be. There were 153 chairs arranged at semicircular long tables in three tiers, with the crest of the Syndicate on the floor in the center, a mosaic of gemstones. The Chairman sat at the center of the top tier, and the others were arrayed around him and down the two tiers by the value of the megacorp they controlled. There were 24 guards in the room, standing around the base of the lower tier with four at the doors leading in. The current Chairman was Bal Kib Vai Hu, CEO of the Vilsarti Corporation, the largest and most valuable megacorp in the Syndicate. It was by virtue of that net worth that Bal Kib was Chairman; so long as his company was the largest and richest, he would be in control of the Board. Jason stopped when the chamberlain did, and he clapped his hands three times at a slow, deliberate pace. "Masters and Mistresses of the Board, the Grand Duke Jason Karinne of the Confederation," he called in a powerful, clear voice. The Benga motioned him forward with a sweeping motion of his arm, and Jason started forward, keeping a tight grip on his emotions. These were the men that had done so much harm to Aria and the Dreamers, but he had to keep that out of his thoughts. To think about it would make him angry, and this was not the time or the place to be angry. He walked out onto the gemstone mosaic and stopped, then he bowed to the Chairman fluidly.

"Master Chairman, exalted members of the Board of CEOs of the Syndicate," he began in a clear, measured voice, "I am Jason Karinne, Grand Duke of the House of Karinne and member of the Confederation of Allied Empires. I stand before you as the chosen agent of the Confederation to negotiate a permanent treaty of peace between the Syndicate and the Confederation. As a show of good faith and hope that we can come to an amicable agreement, I have come alone and unarmed. It is my hope that when I leave here, a reasonable and lucrative agreement will have been reached between our governments."

"You are quite fluent in our language, Grand Duke," a woman on the lowest tier to his right declared. That was Mem Zee Shi Ba, CEO of Hastra Dynamics. "You choose your words with the care of a Benga."

"It is only proper to use the host's chosen language, Mistress," he answered calmly.

"It makes me wonder where you learned it."

"Part of our initial negotiations with your Third Expeditionary Fleet was the exchange of languages so we could communicate with one another," he answered. "So I learned your language from one of you. It is no stretch that I would have the skill of a native speaker."

"That's an amusing anecdote, but has no bearing on why you are here," the Chairman called strongly. "And I find the audacity of your Confederation almost admirable, Grand Duke. You stand before us now seeking peace after attacking us barely one rotation ago."

He tucked his hands into his sleeves and looked up at the aged Benga with a calm, stony expression. "If brevity is what you require, Master Chairman, then by all means let us get to the heart of the matter. Yes, the Confederation attacked your shipyard facility just one rotation ago. Our intent wasn't to destroy your shipyard. The attack was purely a diversion to conceal our true objective, the removal of the Dreamers on the planet's surface from your custody," he said, which caused all of them to stare at him hawkishly. "That is what our entire offensive in this galaxy has been about, Masters and Mistresses. The Dreamers, and the Oracles. We have taken Atrovet, and have removed the Dreamers there from the moon. We have taken every Oracle that you didn't kill yourself, from both your ships and from your planetside facilities. We have completely removed the Dreamers and the Oracles from your custody, and now we shall withdraw from this galaxy and return to our own. We have no more reason to be here," he declared in a strong voice.

"That's it? This was about the brownskins?" the Chairman asked.

"That is all," he answered. "The Confederation has no desire to conquer this galaxy, and we have done what we have done to ensure that the peace treaty that I am here to negotiate will be honored by both sides. We have only one driving goal in this, Masters and Mistresses. We want you to _leave us alone_," he said intensely. "So long as you do not send your fleets to our galaxy to make war on us, we will be peaceful neighbors. We do not wish to expand. We do not wish to take what is yours. We have no interest in this galaxy. We only want you to respect our borders."

"Which you do by invading us," the man to the Chairman's immediate right declared. That was Mor Do Gri Nak, CEO of Emelar Industries, the second largest megacorp in the Syndicate.

"It was our belief that so long as you had control of the Oracles, any peace treaty made between us would be violated the measure they predicted that a future war with us would end with your victory," he answered simply. "Without your guarantee of victory, and knowing the full extent of the damage we caused with our small fleet in the short amount of time we have been here, we feel that you will honor a treaty. After all, there is no profit in losing, and you have already tasted the might of the Confederation Combined Military."

They were quiet a long moment. He could sense they were sending among themselves, betraying the fact that _all_ of them were telepathic. "No treaty can be made unless the return of all Syndicate citizens is agreed upon, and the Dreamers are Syndicate citizens."

"No. They are not," Jason answered calmly. "They are _my_ people, Master Chairman. You captured them from the Consortium, and the Consortium abducted them from a Karinne territory approximately twelve hundred orbits ago. We didn't know they were here until the Third Expeditionary Fleet entered our galaxy, bringing an Oracle with it.

"The Dreamers are of a race called the _Faey_ in my language, and there are Faey in the House of Karinne. The entire Faey race is telepathic, and so when your fleet brought the Oracle to our galaxy, the Faey on the ships that brought our negotiators to parlay with your Fleet commander sensed her presence. That warned us that the Consortium invaders from a thousand orbits ago captured Faey and took them back to this galaxy, and over the course of those thousand orbits, you captured their descendents from the Consortium. That must have been very soon after the Consortium brought them back to this galaxy, given how many there were on Atrovet when we captured the moon," he mused. "So, exalted Masters and Mistresses, I have done nothing more than fulfilled my duty to the Dreamers as their rightful ruler and returned them back to their original home."

He gave them a calm look. "So, Master Chairman, exalted Masters and Mistresses, that is where it stands. The approximately fifty million Syndicate Navy crewmen we have captured after defeating the expeditionary fleet and capturing Atrovet will indeed be returned home to you as quickly as can be arranged, but the Dreamers will not be any part of this negotiation. They are _my_ people, they are the descendents of members of the House of Karinne who were taken from their homes by the Consortium, and I will not return them to you. The Consortium kidnapped them from their homes, and I will return their descendents to their rightful place."

"Easily claimed, but unproven," the Chairman said flippantly.

"Oh, I am quite certain you already know that truth, Master Chairman," he replied. "The Empress Dahnai Merrane of the Faey Imperium was present at the initial negotiations with Fleet Commander Au Mai Sha Ra, and I absolutely guarantee you that she informed you that there were blue-skinned Dreamers in Galaxy B," he replied smoothly. "The Faey are a very visually distinctive race. There would be no doubt that the Fleet Commander would recognize her as a Dreamer instantly."

They were quiet for a long moment, sending among themselves privately. He stood there with a calm, almost serene expression, hands tucked in his sleeves, hoping that he looked eminently confident and unruffled, which they would construe as believing what he said. And they were quiet long enough for the spiders to activate. He stood there as they began to leave his robe, did nothing that might draw attention as the microscopic machines drifted away from him in the air and skittered away from him on the ground, beginning to spread through the room. They didn't leave in such dense numbers that they became visible, so he knew it was going to take a good fifteen minutes or so for them to leave his robe and spread into the room.

"While the matter of the Dreamers is not up for negotiation, the matter of your Naval crewmen most definitely is. We would wish to return them to their homes as soon as is able, for feeding fifty million mouths that produce nothing in return is an expensive undertaking. We only need arrange a place for our transports to bring them—"

"We are not done with the matter of the Dreamers, Grand Duke," the Chairman said strongly. "There can be no peace so long as you hold our people."

"Then I humbly submit a simple solution, Master Chairman. We shall all of us go to where the Dreamers are and ask _them_ where they wish to dwell," he said in a calm voice. "They are sentient beings capable of making their own decision. I will guarantee you here and now that any Dreamer that wishes to return to Atrovet shall be allowed to do so, under the supervision of any agent you so authorize to oversee the process. I will not hold any Dreamer against their will," he said in a clear voice. "And I offer to do it _right now_. Call one of your ships to carry us back to my home galaxy, and we will ask the Dreamers where they wish to live. Every single one of them."

"Your galaxy? How are they in _your_ galaxy?" the Chairman asked.

"We have the technology to travel between our galaxies in a matter of divisions. How do you think we got over here so quickly after defeating your expeditionary fleet, Chairman?" Jason asked simply. "How am I standing before you now? You say the word, and we will be in my galaxy three divisions after we board a ship to take us there. Then you may talk to the Dreamers yourself and ask them where they want to live."

He let them chew over that, and did they ever. He stood there with his hands tucked in his sleeves for a long time as they were silent, sensing a large uptake in their sending, and the emotions rippling through it. He practiced one of the tricks that the _shaman_ taught him to keep control of his emotions without having to resort to meditation, which kept him calm and alert, observant and relaxed. He had just reminded them of what Miaari felt was the one thing that their military advisors had been screaming in their ears over their plan to invade the Milky Way with their entire fleet, the Confederation's intergalactic capability. The admirals and generals understood that it would put all of Andromeda at great risk if they sent their entire fleet, for it would give the CCM free rein to run wild all over Syndicate territory, and do it for _years_, then get the fleet back to the Milky Way in plenty of time to meet the Syndicate's invasion fleet. Kraal had quite a few amusing recordings of military officers warning, pleading, yelling, screaming, even begging the Board not to send the entire fleet, and Jason's remark had just reminded them of those warnings.

He was quite content to let them debate. Every minute they spent debating was another minute the spiders had to spread through the room.

"Your proposal is ludicrous, Grand Duke," the Chairman declared. "The Dreamers are Syndicate citizens, and no peace treaty will be entertained until they are returned home."

He activated the gestalt, giving the amplifiers stacks time to charge, during which he stood silent and impassive. "Then there will be no peace treaty," he said in a calm voice. "Under the traditions of my people, you have thirty rotations to prepare."

"For what?" someone sneered.

"For death," he replied simply. "To put your affairs into order and arrange heirs to your fortunes and your properties. The Confederation will withdraw from your galaxy and will not wage war upon your planets or your people, exalted members of the Board, for our war is not with the Syndicate's people or her military. Our war will be with _you_, the men and woman before me now And _only _you. Our attacks and operations will be targeted at you and you only, and they will begin in thirty rotations. The attacks will continue until all of you are dead, and then we will offer your successors the same chance given to you, to sign a peace treaty. And if they decline, then we will give _them_ thirty rotations to prepare. And so on, and so on, until men and women sit in those chairs who are willing to listen to reason.

"Because we believe that you have the right to understand what is coming, understand this. Everything that is yours is considered a legal and viable target by the forms of war my people practice. Your lives, your properties, the institutions holding your money, anything that is yours is considered a target of war. What is left after you die will be left alone, for it will no longer belong to you, it will belong to your named heir. We do not visit the sins of the parent upon the child. As is tradition among my people, we sent you a warning by destroying only one of your holdings, and you did not heed it.

"So it comes to this. Thirty rotations, Masters and Mistresses. You have thirty rotations of peace to make the necessary preparations to pass your estates on to your heirs. And then we will come for you." He gave a slow, fluid bow. "These negotiations are ended. I bid you farewell, exalted members of the Board, and good luck."

He turned around slowly to face the doors to the elevator, and he brought his talent to bear, sensing every mind within five floors above and below. He also began to actively warp space around himself, which would turn away any surprise weapon they fired at him. He then began to slowly walk towards the doors, seemingly completely ignoring the 153 Benga executives and the guards behind him…who began to _laugh_.

"Do you really think we are going to just let you leave here, Grand Duke?" the Chairman scoffed.

"Yes. You will," Jason answered without turning his head in a serene, focused voice.

"Take this dog into custody," the Chairman ordered. Two of the four guards standing at the elevator started forward with nasty smiles, not bothering to draw any weapons. After all, they were three times his size, they saw him as no threat. He just walked towards them as they quickly covered the distance, reaching out with his talent, reaching within them, and finding his target…which he could only do because he knew exactly where it was. The two men staggered to a stop and gasped, clutching at their chests through their uniforms, and then absolute fountains of dark green blood erupted from their mouths as Jason crushed their hearts, which caused instant hemorrhaging in their chest cavities and made the blood flood their lungs. The two men collapsed to the floor, unmoving, as copious amounts of blood spread out in a pool around their heads.

It was the first time he had ever had to use his power like that. And it did not please him in any way that he was forced to do it.

He daintily took hold of his robes and lifted them off the floor before walking between the two pools, not even looking at the two corpses. The other two men did draw their weapons, and one of them fired at him. The blast of energy bent away from him and hit the floor, gouging a black smoking hole in the polished metal. He fired again, and again, and yet again, each shot bending into the floor, and Jason reached out an open hand, and then made a bit of a show out of clenching his fist. The man's eyes rolled back into his head as he went up onto his tiptoes, he convulsed violently, then he collapsed to the floor. The other guard at the elevator doors was sent flying across the room with a casual wave of Jason's hand, crashing into the wall and falling to the floor, where he groaned and feebly tried to roll onto his back. There was a smear of green blood on the wall where he struck it.

That was only what could be seen. In the invisible spectrum of the mindscape, Jason was assaulted by multiple Benga telepaths, working in concert to try to break his defenses. He allowed them to hammer on his psychic walls for a long time—at least within the mindscape—then he countered by tracking each one back to its originating mind and dominating that mind with swift and skilled strikes, surgical in their precision and overwhelming in their power. Once those telepaths belonged to him, he set them against their brethren, giving the remaining telepathic attackers something much more immediate to worry about.

When he reached the doors, he tucked his hands into his sleeves again and stood motionless as he split his attention into two major splits and maintained his spatial warp as he began to focus his power on the door, focusing it into the molecular structure of the metal, which began to heat it up. A hard shield shimmered into view in front of the tiers, protecting the Board from anyone not on the tiers, as all the remaining guards and several hidden weapon batteries opened up on him. All the energy streams bent away from his body and struck the walls and floor around him, filling the air with acrid smoke. He simply stood there, unmoving, unflinching, his expression stoic and calm, then took two steps back as the metal of the door began to glow red hot. And then it began to melt.

"Stop him!" the Chairman screamed. "Stop him now!"

_Your men can't stop me, Chairman,_ Jason sent calmly, sending openly and so non-telepaths could hear with all the power his gestalt could give him, to impress upon him just how much stronger he was than them, and so everyone in the city around them heard what was coming. Benga over a hundred kathra away heard him. _As I think you may have deduced, my telepathy and my telekinesis are far beyond even your most powerful talents. Your people have barely _scratched_ what talent can do, and you are no match for me. I could kill everyone in this room with a thought, but I will not, because the traditions of my people grant you thirty rotations of protection,_ he told them with enough power to make a few of their noses begin to bleed. _But understand this. In thirty rotations, we will come. Men and women even stronger than I am, with psionic powers you cannot even imagine, powers you cannot counter. And since we have our own Dreamers, that means we have our own _Oracles_, so we will find you no matter where you hide. And when we find you, we will kill you. One. By. One. Until you are no more. _The molten metal sagged towards the floor, exposing the elevator shaft beyond. The elevator platform wasn't there, but he wasn't expecting it to be. He turned to face the Board, regarding them through the hail of weapons fire and through the hard shield as a glob of the metal door was pulled up off the floor by his power and was quickly pulled like taffy to form a small disc, and then the glow bled out of it as he drained it of its heat using his power. He lifted his robe and put his foot on the dull gray metal and stepped up onto it, then let his robes fall back around it, almost making it look like he was levitating. He tucked his hands back into his sleeves and let them just continue to flail at him, bending all their shots Jedi-style back at the automated weapons, destroying them one by one, until the firing slowly petered out. The guards looked at him with stunned expressions, but he was looking up at the Chairman. _If you would prefer to live, then all you have to do is sign the peace treaty. But understand this, all of you. Once the thirty rotations are up, there will be no pardons. There will be no reprieve. There will be no mercy. Even if you sign a peace treaty after your time is up, you will _still _die. And after all of you are dead, the life expectancy of your replacements on the Board of the Syndicate will be measured thirty rotations at a time. Those are the terms. They are not negotiable. They cannot be altered. You will accept them, or you will die._ The disc floated backwards into the hole he melted into the door, the air around it wavering from the heat. _That choice is yours._

He couldn't resist one final, parting shot, one of his final gambits. _Right before I put Fleet Commander Au Mai Sha Ra face down in the sand, I told her she had no idea of the dreadful mistake that your people had made by spreading your aggression beyond the boundaries of your own galaxy,_ he sent, his thought adamant, rippling with overwhelming authority. _You are not the gods of this universe. You are a big fish in a small pond, and you have lifted your head out of the water to discover a world of landwalking giants you never knew was there. The Confederation is just _one_ of the giants walking beyond your pond, Chairman, exalted members of the Board, and we are nowhere near the most powerful, by a measure that I don't think you can imagine. There are empires out beyond this galaxy of such unfathomable power that they can fall upon your galaxy like rampaging beasts and eradicate all life in it, down to the last microbe. And it is my hope that this lesson in humility makes you much more careful should you venture beyond the borders of your galaxy again. As big a fish you may be in this small pond you call your home galaxy, you are _nothing _compared to the monsters that lurk beyond your shores, monsters so fearsome that even we who can smite you with impunity flee in terror when they appear. Anger _them_ at your peril._

_ You. Have. Been. Warned._

And with that, he descended out of their view.

He went down far enough to ensure he was out of sight, and _then_ he wilted on the little platform he made, holding his arms down at his sides as he gave a savage grimace. The gestalt was running at maximum power for minutes, and it was getting so hot that it was threatening to cook the flesh of his arms. He'd stood there impassively for minutes while his arms burned from the inside, but he never let them see it, never let them see how much pain he was in. He could barely move his hands, and he had little control over those movements.

It seemed that all of them, even Cybi, overlooked a critical design flaw in the internal gestalt, insufficient heat dissipation during extended use. There were heat sinks inserted in the amplifier stacks, but they weren't enough to counter the heat the stacks were putting out with extended use at full power. He had to resort to his power to cool them down, prevent his blood from overheating and raising his core body temperature beyond deadly levels, quelling the motion of the molecules of the metal surrounding the gestalt, which effectively cooled them off; heat was nothing more than the vibration and motion of atoms and molecules within their molecular bonds, after all. But the damage had been done, he realized as he stood back up. He could barely move his hands, the muscles and nerves had been damaged by the heat, and the insides of his arms were throbbing with considerable pain. Both of his hands were more or less frozen half-closed, his fingers bent inward from where he was gripping the straps on the insides of his sleeves, and he could barely move his wrist. But he could still move his elbows, mainly since the heat hadn't cooked the flesh around the joint. His fingers were discolored, almost blackened as if he had severe frostbite, and blisters were forming anywhere his skin was close to the metal endolimb, on his fingers, the palms and backs of his hands, and around his wrists.

_[Activate the plan!]_ he communed to Kraal through his memory band. _[I'm out of the audience chamber and on the move!]_

_ [Understood, cousin. Destination, Objective A. Objective B and Objective C on standby.]_

_ [Objective A, understood. I'm on my way as soon as I get out of the building.]_

_ [Mission status?]_ Kraal asked.

_[Mission accomplished!]_

_ [Well done, cousin. Personal status?]_

_ [My hands and forearms are injured. I'll be unable to grab or grasp anything, warn anyone that may try to reach out to me. Outside of that, I'm alright.]_

_ [Understood. The gestalt?]_

_ [Operational.]_

_ [Understood.]_

He was in the elevator shaft, and thanks to Kraal getting his hands on the building's plans, he knew what was within it. He descended only four floors, then stopped the disc at a grate covering a large air shaft. He defeated the alarm sensor on the grate and then pulled it out with his power, moved the disc inside, then replaced it, managing to do it without setting off the alarm. It was more than large enough for him to stand inside of it. He knew from the plans that the duct extended all the way to a room at the edge of the building, an office with large windows to provide the executive that occupied it with a view, and he could get out through that window. They would be expecting him at every door. The duct had security in it, part of the paranoia of the Board, so he had to be very careful or he'd set off a sensor that would reveal his location. But regardless of that, the building's alarm was sounding, and that meant that the halls were going to flood with security officers, on top of soldiers mobilizing from the garrison attached to the building.

That was why he was in the air duct.

According to Kraal's information, the air duct had weight sensors in the metal, and both cameras and motion detection sensors mounted into the ductwork, and he could defeat all of them with his power. The disc would keep him off the duct, thus bypassing the weight sensor, and he could blind the cameras and the motion sensors with light manipulation. The tricky part was going to be the motion sensors, due to their sensitivity, which according to Kraal's data detected changes in the reflection of infrared light back to a sensor. He'd have to do it just right, or the change in the infrared light would trip the sensor.

Because he had to move slowly and carefully, he was only about two thirds of the way through the duct when lights appeared at the grate behind him. He turned to see two armored Benga hovering outside the grate, too small for them to easily fit in it, and their spotlights were right on him. He reacted before they did, reaching out and swiftly dominating them, and then he had one of them call out over their comm. "He's in the air duct on floor 168!" the guard boomed, and the two of them descended quickly out of sight. They truly believed he was there, when he was on floor 173. That would decoy off any security in the office he planned to enter. He made his way to the end of the duct and dropped down into a large, empty office, then moved immediately to the window. He pushed towards it with the stiffened claw that was his right hand, and the window shattered, causing a rush of air out into the void. He carried himself out into the polluted air and looked at his destination, which was a plaza about a kathra away, easily visible from nearly 3,000 shakra in the air. He saw their civilian traffic crawling all over, but he also saw warmechs arriving on the scene.

Faster than Kraal anticipated.

Oh well. Dealing with warmechs was part of the plan, which was why Jason had extensively studied the ones they'd captured to learn how they work. That would allow him to disable a warmech with his telekinesis, and do it without harming the pilot. But, the _pilot _was the weakest link within a warmech, at least to Jason. He started angling down so he'd reach the ground well off the campus of the capitol complex, and he had to bend away dozens of shots at him from the building, fired from automated weapon platforms mounted on the sides and from security forces, then he dominated the pilot of the warmech that was rapidly approaching him. He didn't have the pilot give any indication he'd been dominated, not until Jason reached the ground, civilians who had scrambled for shelter when the shots from above started peppering the ground, watching him with slow realization that he was the telepathic voice they heard when the warmech landed right behind him, without him even glancing over his shoulder, then stood in obedient defense of him as he stepped off the metal disc and began to walk towards the beacon.

Slowly.

This was about optics. Just as he'd slowly strode from the audience chamber, he wanted the Board to see how utterly unconcerned he was at their amusing attempts to stop him. He wanted to scare the hell out of them, so their successors would be more willing to sign a peace treaty. And while his telekinesis may be fearsome thanks to Mrar, it was his _telepathy_ that made him far more dangerous, especially in a city where he was surrounded by minds to dominate. The Syndicate understood the power of telepathy, but they had never encountered a telepath like a gestalt-boosted Generation, who had been trained by one of the most skilled telepaths alive and backed that up with the kind of power that only a gestalt could provide. And besides, it wasn't spiking his gestalt as much to use telepathy as it did telekinesis.

The dominated warmech was joined by others in short succession, then by several armored infantry, until it looked like he was being escorted down the avenue by an honor guard of Syndicate military. They surrounded him, more or less shielding him from distant snipers with their great size, with the warmechs surrounding them to provide more protection, and all of them were firing on soldiers and warmechs that weren't dominated, actively protecting him from them. Jason had to fend off several Benga telepaths in their attempts to break his domination; they'd learned not to try to attack _him_, so they were going after those he had dominated. So while he was walking sedately, with a serene expression, under that he was a blitz of activity as he protected his little parade from Benga telepaths while they protected him physically.

He did Ryn proud.

The procession walked nearly half a kathra before the Syndicate revealed its counter, in the form of a Naval destroyer slowly descending over the city. That, Kraal had predicted would happen, and that finally spurred him to move with much more swiftness. He could turn a shot from a line vessel away, but the damage it would do when it hit something put him at risk, despite being able to warp space. The heat of the blast would bleed through the warped space, and it would cook him alive. He only had to go about another kathra, so he had one of his warmech pilot puppets pick him up and engage his glide drives. His pet warmechs left the infantry behind, whom he simply knocked out.

And then he hit his first snag in the plan. _[Objective A impossible, switch to Objective M,]_ Kraal instructed.

_[What's going on, cousin?]_

_ [Diffusion field is up over A's location,]_ he answered. A bridge couldn't form a nexus in a diffusion field. _[Field does not cover Objective M.]_

_ [Switching to Objective M, roger,]_ he informed, then had the warmech pilot carrying him turn down another avenue and sent the remaining warmech pilots to attack the destroyer. But more destroyers were starting to descend, he saw, and that caused him to consider not being such an easy target. Objective M was a beacon set inside one of the old abandoned mass transit systems, which put it underground and accessible by three different routes through the warren of underground tunnels under the surface of the city.

Going under the surface had benefits and risks. The benefits were that he was out of the line of fire by the line vessels and it was easier for him to hide, given that their sensor network had issues penetrating the ground, but the drawback was that down in the tunnels, he had much more limited movement. That confined him to pre-built and pre-determined routes, and if they got scanners down there and managed to catch him in a long tunnel with no side passages, they could just stack the entrances and trap him inside. There were three ways to reach Objective M underground, but one of those paths offered him a bit of flexibility, since it passed through one of the abandoned residential areas for workers, and so it went through a large gallery with streets and alleys, giving him room to maneuver.

That was his best option. Staying topside was going to be suicide once those line vessels got into a firing position. The Benga wouldn't care about killing a few thousand civilians, so they would most definitely fire on him.

The warmech pilot carried him past three more megabuildings, then slowed to a stop at an unassuming grate by a sidewalk and set him down gently. He then sent it off to attack the destroyer with the others, lifted the grate with his power, and then showed off a bit by picking up his own weight with his telekinesis and lowering himself down into the shaft. He replaced the grate over him and descended down into the darkness. The grate was a utility line access point, so the tunnel running down at the bottom carried power conduit and pipes, probably for water. He knew that the tunnel would intersect with another tunnel that would lead to an old unused serviceway that would get into that residential gallery. On the far end of the gallery was the subway tunnel the old mass transit system used for its trains, and that would take him to Objective M.

_[I'm going to need night vision gear,]_ he told Kraal. _[Are any agents close enough to access an equipment cache?]_

_ [Get to the first intersection. A night vision mini-cam will be waiting for you that you can merge with,]_ Kraal answered.

_[Understood. Keep them away from me, Kraal. I don't want them to find out we have agents on E Chaio.]_

_ [The drop will be made before you arrive.]_

_ [Understood. En route.]_

He knew they knew he was in the tunnels, but they'd yet to respond. He was forced to move along the tunnel without his eyes, using a hand on the wall and counting his steps to know when he was getting close to the intersection, which took several long moments. He approached the intersection and got close enough to sense the biogenic chip in a camera only about a tikra across. He fetched it with his power and affixed it to his forehead, just over his right eye using the skin bonder, and then he merged to it. The tunnel became visible when he accessed the camera's feed, splitting his attention so it overlaid his normal vision and syncing the camera to his eyes so the camera always tracked with the movement of his eyes so the two different visual feeds aligned. Being able to see made him move much faster, turning right at the intersection and hurrying along, passing several large rodent animals that looked up at him in open curiosity as he rushed past them. He had his mind open for other minds, hunting for any that descended to his level, and that was exactly what he detected in front of him.

They knew where he was. Their sensor net could penetrate this deeply into the subsurface.

But, it also exposed their main weakness, and that was the fact that they had to send people down here after him, people with minds he could attack. The Syndicate didn't employ robots or drones the way the Karinnes did, they didn't have any Rockers or Spot drones or anything of the sort. The minds ahead of him were telepaths, which told him they were at least that smart. Sending a non-telepath down here after him would have been the pinnacle of stupidity. He slowed to a stop and reached out, finding their six minds, and he struck with great speed and power. Since they were telepaths, trying to dominate them would be too tricky for him to bother. Dominating a telepath was a delicate operation that took a lot of precision to do without harming the victim, and he didn't have the time for that. Instead of using a scalpel, he instead used a club, overwhelming the six minds with sheer power and sending them into comas. The fact that he struck from so far away, before they could sense him since he was actively hiding his mind, added to the surprise and let him take all six down in a simultaneous attack that barely lasted a second.

It took him nearly ten minutes to reach their inert bodies, stepping through them where they'd been in a small chamber in an intersection waiting for him to arrive. And as luck would have it for him, he only had to go about 400 more shakra to reach the abandoned serviceway. It had been covered over, so there was no grate or door, and that required him to again resort to his power. He melted through the tunnel wall the same way he'd melted through the elevator door, and again, he saved a piece of the metal and formed a disc out of it for him to use as a levitation aid—it was easier to levitate the disc and stand on it than it was for him to levitate himself. And he needed to do it this time, since the abandoned tunnel beyond the melted wall was partially flooded, with a good two shakra of stagnant, foul-smelling water on the floor. He endured the awful smell as he moved down the passageway on his disc, keeping track of the minds down in the tunnels. There were none in the residential gallery ahead of him, mainly because it was so old that it probably didn't appear on some of their maps. But there were dozens of minds in the tunnels around him, who were now milling around, some reversing direction. Their sensors told them which direction he was in, but their maps didn't show them how to reach him. He figured he had about ten minutes before someone in the city's planning department sent them updated maps showing the tunnels that were sealed over and abandoned, so he had to get ahead of them as much as he could. The residential gallery was going to be dangerous because it was so open—

The entire tunnel shook violently, and he heard a muted explosion overhead. Dust and some stone fragments rained down from the roof and plunked into the water below. There was another one, then another, and it was then that he realized that the ships over the city were firing their weapons at his current location, trying to collapse the tunnel he was in.

He knew they would fire on him and kill civilians, but they were willing to fire on him and deal damage to the city as well?

That spurred him on. He knelt down on his disc, gripping the edge as best he could with his injured hand, and went as fast as he could without overheating the gestalt, managing to hit about 50 kathra an hour down the relatively straight tunnel. The ships above were adjusting their aim, so there was a constant rain of dust and small stones from the roof along his path, the dust adding to the stench to make it hard to breathe. He winced when he got hit in the shoulder by a large stone, nearly making his arm go numb, then felt another one hit him in the face, cutting into his cheek. He put his other arm up to protect his face as he saw the end of the passage, then slowed to a stop in a bit of dismay when he got there.

They were stairs going down. The passage was _underwater_.

He had little choice. He formed a solid telekinetic shield around himself, then descended down into the foul water. That limited him to the air inside the shield, so he moved as quickly as he could, going down the stairs and down the passage, until he reached a large hatch. That was the opening into the residential gallery, and he could only hope and pray that it wasn't flooded as well. It spiked his gestalt to hold him up on the disc and maintain the shield _and_ open the hatch, pulling the locking bar and then having to exert force to pull it open, given that the door opened inward and that put the weight of the water against it. But to his relief, the chamber beyond was not flooded, so the water started to gush out of the door. He got out and ascended up over the door and then relaxed his power, which made the rushing water pull the door closed. He was at the south end of the residential gallery, which was a huge cavern with a ceiling a good fifty shakra overhead and the floor littered with small home units, placed almost randomly, which turned the streets around them into narrow, crooked thoroughfares that would quickly confuse and disorient anyone not familiar with their patterns. Because the Benga could break into the gallery at any time, he stayed down on those streets so he couldn't be seen, moving through them atop his disc with confidence. He had reason to be confident, he had a map of the place. The shelling from above continued, and the roof above shuddered and conducted large _BOOMS_ down into the gallery. The minds down in the tunnels were getting much closer, which told him that they now had updated maps and knew how to get into the gallery.

_[Objective M no longer viable,]_ Kraal warned.

_[What happened?]_

_ [The gallery collapsed,]_ he answered. _[New destination, Objective Alpha. Once Alpha achieved, Objective Q.]_

_ [Alpha, understood,]_ he replied, changing direction now heading for the east side of the gallery. Objective Alpha was an equipment cache, a special suit of Crusader armor rigged with Kimdori SCM for stealth, which he would need to get to Objective Q. That was very deep down into the subsurface, down so deep that the air was toxic. He couldn't reach it without armor or some kind of breathing system. The armor, however, changed his tactics. No one could see him and live now, because if they saw he had armor, then they'd know that he'd somehow smuggled the armor onto the planet, and that would alert them that the Kimdori had penetration into E Chaio.

Objective Q was actually the smart choice, because it was so deep under the subsurface that they wouldn't be able to track him with their sensor system.

Objective Alpha was in one of the abandoned service tunnels even deeper down than the gallery, part of a much older tunnel network that had been abandoned centuries ago. He could reach it from an old utility tunnel that went out from the east side of the gallery he was in, one that would have a major advantage for him.

It was an old sewer tunnel, and it wasn't sized for a Benga.

The much older tunnels were built back when E Chaio had many more non-Benga on it, who were used as slave labor to build the planet-spanning city, so many of their service and utility tunnels were sized for a person more Jason's size, not a Benga. The armor stashed down there was in a tunnel a Benga couldn't enter, which was why it was selected to be a weapon cache location. That armor was built for him, so it had a tactical gestalt in it. And that would also be a major boon, since it meant he no longer had to use the ones built into his arms, that had all but destroyed his hands.

He reached the tunnel quickly, which was under a grate in the floor of the gallery. It dropped down about thirty shakra and went north and south, and south would lead him down into the deeper sewer networks, which would then connect with the old tunnel network holding his armor. He'd have to double back almost halfway back to the capitol to get to it, and from there, he'd have to travel about 26 kathra to reach Objective Q. That was a beacon in one of the oldest intact residential galleries about 50 kathra from the capitol, and since it was specifically built for the "little races," the tunnels leading into it weren't big enough for Benga to enter. And that deep under the surface, nearly 300 shakra deep and just above the actual surface of the planet, their sensors wouldn't be able to find him.

He _barely_ made it into the tunnel. The destroyers above managed to blow a hole into the gallery just as he was lifting the grate out of the way, and he had to dive into the tunnel to escape getting crushed by falling debris. The landing was bone-jarring, and he nearly broke his ankle on impact, but he managed to hobble out of the shaft and get into the dry sewer tunnel before the rubble above landed on him. It sealed him into the tunnel, but luckily for him, he was in the right one. It also meant that they had to dig out the tunnel to reach him. He paused to check his ankle, which was severely sprained but not broken, and that incited him to find relatively flat piece of rubble from the pile , sit down on it, and have it carry him down the sewer tunnel.

For them not coming anywhere near him, they were certainly wearing him down. He had a laceration on his face and shoulder from falling debris, so he had blood on his face and inside his robes going down his arm, and now he had a nearly broken ankle that would make walking very painful. But luckily he hadn't tired yet, so he was able to carry himself with his telekinetic power, sitting on the roughly elliptical piece of stone from the ceiling that had a flat top and having it float down the tunnel at a jogging pace. The tunnel around him continued to shudder from time to time as the sound of muted explosions reached his ears, as they continued to shell the surface to try to collapse the tunnel he was in. But he was much deeper now, deep enough that no dust was filtering down from the ceiling, and that provided him considerable protection. They had no minds this deep, but there were more and more flooding the tunnels above him.

They were looking for a way down.

It took him nearly half an hour, but he made it. He entered the small utility passage holding his armor, forcing him to abandon his disc and hobble nearly a kathra down the narrow tunnel, but he reached his armor. He quickly got his formal robes off, to where he stood naked, and then got his armor on, having to use telekinesis to do it since his fingers were all but immovable. But once he got his armor on, sealed, and activated, he merged up into it and moved his body using the armor, going limp inside and just letting the armor move for him. He wadded up his robes and stuffed them into a carry case and attached it to his back, then brought up the tactical gestalt. _[Objective Alpha achieved,]_ he told Kraal. _[All systems fully operational. Is Objective Q still a go?]_

_ [Objective Q is go,]_ he answered.

With the armor, the entire game changed. The armor was equipped with SCM, hiding itself and him from sensors, which meant that they couldn't trap him. He had glide drives now, and he used them, skimming back up the tunnel the way he came, coming back out into the tunnel, and continuing down towards his destination. There was a large chamber ahead that once held a power switching station, and the entrance into the next level of tunnels below this one was in that room. Again, it was through a sewer pipe, the sewer draining into the unused tunnels below, though most of these old tunnels were fairly dry. He'd been lucky so far in that he'd only encountered one flooded tunnel. But he also knew that the danger of running into flooded tunnels increased the lower he got…which wasn't nearly as much a danger now that he was in armor.

The Benga wouldn't be able to easily follow him as he descended down into the sewer tunnel, followed it, then dropped down into an old mass transit tunnel that had to have been built a thousand years ago, but had not collapsed due to the metal used in the tunnel walls and supports. The tunnel had ankle-deep water in it, and the air at this level was now toxic to most life, with barely any oxygen and filled with toxins and chemicals that emanated from decomposing materials and the toxic soup that drained down here from above. It was also getting hotter and hotter as he descended, which also made him glad he was in armor.

He paused to assess the situation. He was now too deep for their ships to collapse the tunnels, it would cause entire sections of the city above to collapse, and he didn't think they were willing to go _that_ far. He was now under the sensor line Kraal drew for him on the maps, now too deep for their sensors to track him if for some reason the SCM in his armor failed. There were still Benga in the tunnels above him, swarming around quickly, steadily descending after him in pursuit. But with him now in armor equipped with Kimdori SCM, that meant that their hand scanners could no longer find him. They had lost him on their sensors, but they were still trying to swarm into the lower levels trying to find him.

The other good news for him was that Objective Q was going to be more or less Benga-free. He had to follow the subway line for about 16 kathra, where it intersected another subway line, then take that line to a dead end. That dead held an access tunnel to a deeper section, he'd go about 10 kathra through a series of tunnels and reach another access tunnel to an even deeper section, and that would connect to one of the original subterranean complexes on E Chaio, which was built for people his size, not Benga-sized. Once he was in that section, he had to travel about 30 kathra through a series of ancient mass transit tunnels, which would bring him to the gallery holding the beacon..

The Benga weren't giving up. Unable to find him on sensors, they were now using telepaths to try to find his mind. He felt nearly fifty of them brush over him, unable to penetrate his telepathic stealth, a trick Ryn taught him that hid his mind completely from telepaths.

But, he realized, the major danger of this operation was now passed. He'd gotten out of the building, he was in armor, and he was now too deep for their sensors to find him. He had to remain alert, but his life was no longer in direct danger.

_[I think I'm out of the worst of it, Kraal,]_ he informed his friend as he started out again, skimming at a fast pace down the tunnel. _[I'm certainly not going to let down my guard, but I'm under the sensor line.]_

_ [I agree, but remain vigilant, cousin. It's when you think you've won the game that you most often lose.]_

_ [Agreed.]_

It took him nearly twenty minutes to get to the access point to get down into the next level, and fifteen more to get to the one that reached the lowest level. And while the Benga weren't threatening him, though they were still swarming through the tunnels above looking for him, he felt more and more of a feeling of _foreboding_ as he got deeper and deeper under the surface. As he descended the vertical shaft into the original subterranean network, built just over the surface of the planet, he felt a strange dread roil through him, making him nervous and jumpy. He made his way through tunnels that hadn't known the footstep of a bipedal being in thousands of years, many of them partially collapsed or collapsed, many of them filled with water from just at his ankles to well over his head. The air down here was beyond toxic, with virtually no oxygen and filled with pollutants and contaminants that would kill him in a matter of seconds if he took a single breath of it. He finally managed to reach the mass transit tunnel, which was much larger than the tunnels he'd traveled, flooded about four shakra deep with foul black water. This was the home stretch, he knew, for the gallery was about ten kathra up the tunnel, and the beacon was set on top of one of the buildings within the gallery. He skimmed over the surface of the water, dodging pieces of debris that had fallen out of the roof over the millennia, feeling that dread rise more and more within him. It increased even more when he entered the gallery, ascending on his engines and flying over the collapsed rubble below where most of the smaller buildings and houses had collapsed over the years. There were only four buildings still standing, and his objective was one shaped more or less like a pyramid, which was probably why it survived this long. The beacon was placed at the top.

He landed there a few moments later, looking at the beacon, which was hovering in midair, and from the looks of it, ready to link to the nexus bridge. _[Objective Q achieved,]_ he told Kraal. _[Have them open the nexus.]_

_ [Linking is taking place right now, cousin. ETA 43 seconds.]_

He had trouble focusing on Kraal's words, because the nameless dread had reached a fever pitch. He turned around and looked out over the gallery, unable to figure out what it was, but it was so powerful that his flesh was shivering. He took several deep, cleansing breaths, trying to calm down, but he realized slowly that the feeling wasn't coming from _him_.

It was _E Chaio_. It was _E Chaio_ that was filled with dread!

He knelt down, putting his armored hand on the roof of the pyramid, and he started making sense of it. E Chaio wasn't dead. It—she—had allowed her children to do unspeakable things to her because they were _her children_, and she loved them. She endured the pain, the torments they placed on her, but now…now she understood her error. Their hearts had closed to her, had closed to all love, and it had turned them into abominations. She wanted her children to change, to be what they once were before they formed the Syndicate, and the nameless dread was that Jason would leave before she could convey her wishes.

She felt that her children could be redeemed, and she begged Jason to try to bring it about.

"I…I don't know if I can," he whispered aloud. "They're so far gone, it would take a miracle to bring them back. The darkness of their hearts has closed around them, made them loveless. I'm not sure what I can do to reverse that. Besides, the change has to come from _them_. I can't force their hearts to change. They have to change on their own. But…but I promise you this. I can try. I doubt I will succeed, but I can try."

The world soul of E Chaio showed him an image, a memory of emotion, of where he could begin.

Gen Lun Ba Ru.

Jason blinked. She was right. Gen was very different from other Benga, he had honor, and in a way, that honor made his heart less hard and callous than other Benga. And he understood her intimation. If the heart of _one_ Benga could change, then that Benga could spread that change to the others. And over time, maybe thousands of years, the culture of the Benga just might change with their hearts.

It wouldn't be overnight. It may take centuries, millennia, but for the soul of a planet, that wasn't much time at all.

"I…I understand. I will do as you ask," he said as the nexus bridge opened behind him. "But I can't make any promises. I can only promise that we will try."

The dread instantly ended, replaced by contented anticipation.

"Good luck, E Chaio," he said as he stood back up. He turned and saw the nexus bridge formed, swirling, waiting for him to step through it. He contemplated giving the Board one final tweak, or sending to the population, but he ruled against it. It would be best if he simply left, and let the Board stew of him lurking down here for a while. It would give the soldiers here some exercise, and maybe while they were down here, they might learn something about their past. It would be best if he simply disappeared.

He stepped up to the nexus, put his armor into gate passage mode, and did just that.

He stepped through and into Nexus Three, where Songa and two other doctors, Miaari, Zaa, Jyslin, Dahnai, and Symone were waiting anxiously for him, watching him hobble towards them slowly. His wife and _amu_ rushed towards him the instant the all clear was given, and they put his arms around their shoulders and helped him towards the hovering gurney. Songa quickly knelt down and started removing the sollaret of his armor. _I was so worried!_ Jyslin told him. _Are you alright, love?_

"I'm alright," he said aloud as he took off his helmet, and one of the doctors started tending the jagged laceration on his face. "Truth be told, that was far easier than I expected it to be," he told them. "I was able to get out of the building quickly, and that was what mattered most. I didn't even have to use Mrar's phasing trick."

"Gloat later, dear," Songa said seriously as she got his boot off, then started working on the armor sections around his calf. "Kraal sent word that your hands are injured?"

"Yeah, the gestalt cooked them from the heat," he answered, holding up his hands, which were stiffened into claws again, since he had to turn off power assist to get through the gate without blowing out the systems in his armor. "I'm not sure there's much you can do for them, doc. I think they'll have to come off."

One of the other doctors removed his gauntlet, and Symone gasped when she saw his discolored had.

"Holy shit, baby, what happened?" she asked, looking at his hand.

"I told you, the heat more or less cooked my arms from the forearm down. The heat sinks Rook installed in them weren't enough," he answered. "It would have boiled my blood and killed me if I hadn't taken steps."

"Segments of your flesh are dead, your Grace," the doctor said, holding an instrument against his hand. "It's going to turn necrotic very soon. We'll have to remove it."

"Like I said," he nodded. "What about the spiders, cousin?" he asked, looking at Miaari. "Did I get them?"

"Everyone in the room is infected, cousin," she replied with a proud smile. "They didn't leave after you escaped. They stayed in the room to oversee the pursuit of you, and that gave the spiders time to reach them. We can flip that switch at any time."

"That's up to the council, but I hope they wait a few days. I may have scared them into suing for peace."

"We saw everything, baby," Dahnai told him. "Cybi had a tap on your senses, and she let us watch from your perspective. I had no idea you could be so fucking _scary_, baby," she grinned.

"Too right, babe, that whole just walking away without a care in the world shit was just classic," Symone agreed.

"That was the whole reason. Make them believe that the last thing in the world they wanted to do was piss off the Confederation," he said, wincing a bit as the doctor probed at his injured arm. She'd removed the vambrace and was probing his forearm, close to his elbow. "Yeah, doc, _that_ part is alive," he said with a hiss of pain.

"This is a grade three sprain, dear, you need to keep weight off of it," Songa told him, standing back up. "What about your shoulder?"

"I think it's still bleeding," he said. "The cut there is pretty deep."

"Let's get the rest of this armor off of him," Jyslin said.

They stripped him to the waist, and it wasn't a pretty sight. Both of his arms were obviously injured below the elbow, he had quite a few deep bruises in his shoulders and chest from the raining debris, a really nasty bruise on his left leg, a badly swollen ankle, and the laceration in his shoulder had bled all the way down to the waist, so his chest and stomach were streaked and smeared with both dried and fresh blood. Songa stopped the bleeding with that liquid bandage they used, then the three doctors gave his arms a very long inspection. A camera pod floated over and projected a flat hologram in front of him, and he found himself looking at the Confederate Council. "Are you alright, Jason?" Gau asked, who was standing at the speaker's podium in his usual resplendent robes. He had the gavel.

"A little worse for wear, but Miaari reports that my mission was a success," he answered.

"His Grace has injuries that will require surgery, your Majesty," Songa reported. "I'm afraid he must be taken straight to the medical annex in Karsa and into a surgical theater as quickly as possible."

"Nothing life threatening, I hope?"

"It will only become life threatening if we do not operate quickly," she answered. "We only have about two hours before he starts to suffer the first stages of sepsis. We must excise the dead tissue before it begins to release toxins into his bloodstream."

"Miaari can give you a full report, Gau," Jason told him. "As you heard, I've more or less been kidnapped by my doctor." Gau chuckled a bit when Songa lightly smacked him on the top of the head like a misbehaving child.

"I will depart for the Hall of Peace immediately, your Grace," Miaari said with a nod, and she turned and headed for the landing bay.

"Then we will receive the Handmaiden's report and consider it while you are being tended, Jason."

"Sounds good to me. Songa can inform you when I'm awake again."

He nodded. "Recover quickly, my friend. We'll talk to you when you're awake."

When the hologram winked out, Songa and another doctor pushed him fully up onto the gurney, raising the back so he could recline without laying down. "We do need to get you there as quickly as we can, dear. But I'm afraid we don't have many options for your arms," she said. "We don't have any cloned tissue ready for it. We can attach artificial limbs, or we can begin the regrowth process."

He looked down at his discolored arms, remembering what he was like when he had access to that kind of power all the time. And that serene, cold, intimidating _killer _was not who he wanted to be. "I don't want this gestalt," he said as he leaned back. "Take the arms off, and put them somewhere far away from me. Replace my arms with endolimbs for now. I'll decide later if I want cloned replacements."

She gave him a long look, then nodded. "I'll have Rook make them himself," she told him. "But you should be ready, dear. This is going to take a while."

"I figured. You doctors are so lazy, it takes you two hours just to tie your shoes," he smiled at her, which made her laugh.

"I'm the one about to operate on you, dear. If you don't want me to accidentally amputate something different, you'd better be nice to me."

"You cut _that_ off, you answer to _them_," he said, nodding his head towards his wife and _amu_. That made everyone around the gurney laugh.

_Daira, 18 Demaa, 4405, Faey Orthodox Calendar_

_ Thursday, 27 March 2019 Terran Standard Calendar_

_ Daira, 18 Demaa, year 1330 of the 97__th__ Generation, Karinne Historical Reference Calendar_

_Karsa Medical Annex, Karsa, Karis_

It was the second time he woke up to having no arms, but this time it wasn't quite so ghastly.

The arms attached to his lower humerus bones now were standard endolimbs, and that meant that the metal "bones" were covered in artificial muscles, which was itself wrapped in bandages to conceal it.

It was nearly 32 hours after they put him under, but that wasn't a surprise. They probably had to do a lot of very delicate work to cut the old endoskeleton off of him and then implant the new ones, which were made out of standard foamed iso-aluminum. There was nothing they could do to remove the Abrallium from his humerus bones, but then again, there was no real need to do so. The Abrallium was only there to keep his upper arms from breaking, they weren't part of the gestalt they'd put in the arms, so he didn't really mind it all that much.

He'd be like Zora now, but with two arms instead of one. The endolimbs weren't special or different from standard ones in any way. No additional weapons, no little extras. He could sense the control circuitry and the limiters within them, telling him the control circuitry was biogenic, and they were stock endolimb units, just as he'd requested.

The gestalt was gone…and that made him feel far more relief than he expected.

It didn't hit him until after he'd gotten out of there, how _frightening_ it had been to display his power the way he had, and to do it without kindness or compassion. He'd killed using his power before, but never like that. Never using his telekinesis to crush the life out of a man, or sever his carotid artery. Using his power like that in defense would have been one thing, but to have to pretend that it didn't bother him in the face of the Board, _that_ was what bothered him the most. He was not that kind of person, and to have to act like it had disturbed him far more than he expected…and he was glad it did. He didn't _want_ to get comfortable with the idea of killing people using his power. He didn't _want_ to have to pretend that it didn't bother him. He'd played a solid game of deception with the Board, and now he was relieved beyond measure that he didn't have to pretend to be something he wasn't anymore.

He awoke to quite the little gathering. The room was filled with his children and their mothers with the CBIMS and two CBMOMs and Rook in the back, along with Vell and Jenn, who were standing by the door. This was the core of his family, his children, their mothers, their mothers' husbands, and the biogenic units, and they were all packed in around the bed. Rann and Shya were on his right, and Kyri and Aria were on his left, with the other kids surrounding the bed and their mothers behind them. Kellin, Sirri, and Maer were also in the room, which was just fine with him. They were family, too. _Dad, thank Trelle you're awake!_ Rann sent happily, putting a hand on his shoulder. All the others joined in sending their relief and happiness to see him awake, and that made him chuckle.

_I wish I could hug all of you, but right now I'm not doing much of anything,_ he noted, looking down at his arms, which lay limply at his sides. _See, guys, I told you I'd come home. And I keep my promises._

_ What happened there, Daddy?_ Kyri asked. _They said you were hurt pretty bad when you got back._

_ It could have been a lot worse,_ he told her. _Truth be told, it was much easier than I was expecting it to be. I took them by surprise so much, they didn't really put up much of a fight when I left._

_ So the gestalt worked?_ Min asked.

_More or less…but it did more damage to me than they did. I'm glad to be rid of it. I didn't like how it made me feel at all._

_ What do you mean?_

_ I mean, I wasn't meant to be what the gestalt turned me into,_ he answered firmly. _I don't want to feel like that, ever again. So I had them take the gestalt off, and I hope I never so much as see it again._

Both Jyslin and Dahnai gave him long, searching looks, then Jyslin seemed to understand. She leaned down and kissed him tenderly on the forehead, having to push Rann and Shya out of the way to do it.

_Alright, everyone, you had your chance to say hello,_ Songa called from outside the room. _You'll need to clear out for a bit so we can give him an exam, then you can come back In smaller groups,_ she added as she opened the door.

They reluctantly cleared out—well, everyone but Amber, she made it quite clear that she wasn't going anywhere—and he endured a fairly long examination. Songa checked the work done implanting the endolimbs, examining the border between his flesh and the artificial muscles and synthetic flesh under it, then explained what would happen next. _Over the next four days, dear, you'll undergo sixteen different treatments to grow your own flesh over the endolimb,_ she told him. _There will also be some assimilation training, since you've never had a cybernetic prosthetic before. In about two takirs, though, you'll be back to playing the piano, dear, that's a promise,_ she smiled. _You'll have some use of your hands in about three days, when we finish the procedure enough to activate the endolimbs and allow you to move them without damaging the work we've done, but you won't have full and complete dexterity in them until you complete assimilation training._

_ Sounds good,_ he answered as Amber laid down on his stomach. "Hey now, I am not a bed," he complained, which caused her to look at him with scathing disregard before laying her chin down on the base of his ribs and watching him, as if he'd disappear if she looked away.

"She was a complete wreck while you were gone, dear," Songa told him. "Not even Rann could calm her down. I don't think she's going to let you out of her sight for a while."

She gave an agreeing little yip, narrowing her eyes at him.

He had to laugh. "See, I'm okay, mommy," he told her dryly. "A little dinged up, but mostly fine."

She turned her head very slowly and all but glared at the endolimb on his right arm.

"That's nothing that Songa can't fix," he countered. "So calm down, you silly little thing. I'm home, I'm going to be alright, and I love you too."

She didn't look convinced. She just laid there, as if her tiny body was holding him down, and just stared at him.

"Would you do me a favor and pet her by proxy, Songa?" he asked, which made her laugh. Songa smiled down at her and did as he asked, patting her gently on the head, then scratching her behind her ears.

"It's going to be fine, little girl," Songa cooed. "We'll get him all fixed up in no time, that's a promise."

Amber just gave a squeaky little growl, continuing to stare at him.

"That means you'd better, or she'll be mad at you," Jason told Songa with a chuckle.

"In five days, he'll be out of the annex and back home. About fifteen days after that, it'll be like this never happened," Songa promised her, pointing at his endolimb. "That's not so long, is it?"

Amber just slowly blinked.

"Such a mother hen," Jason sighed, which made Songa smile down at him and Amber give him a challenging look. "Alright, you can stay here in the room with me. But no complaining about hospital food," he warned.

She rose back up to a seated position, giving a happy little yip as her two tails almost writhed behind her.

"Oh, so that's what that was all about," Songa chuckled in a soft voice.

"She'll be bored inside an hour," Jason predicted.

"Oh, I'm sure she'll be quite happy to be bored, as long as he gets to be bored with you," Songa told him, then leaned down and kissed Amber on the head lovingly. "You keep an eye on him, my little girl, while I go fetch something I need."

Amber settled herself on the bed beside him—trying to get under the covers, as usual—and was quiet witness to a series of visits from his kids, from his friends, and then from people at work. But she was also there for the guards returning to the room, returning to him, and got to see Aya hug him fiercely before giving him a kiss full on the lips. _You will never, ever do anything like that again,_ she stated adamantly.

_You're right, I'm not. I'm done with heroics,_ he agreed. _And I never want to do _that_ again. The gestalt, Aya. I've used them before, but it never felt—I never felt like a _weapon_ until that moment, when the gestalt was a part of me, and I was a part of it. Men were never meant to have that kind of power at their command. I don't ever want to feel like that again, feel like it's so easy to kill again. I had them take the gestalt off, and I don't even want to see it again. I'll never imprint to a tactical like it's a standard gestalt interface again._

Aya put her hand on his shoulder, then gave him a glorious smile. _You have no idea how relieved we are to hear that,_ she told him. _But we're still going to have to punish you._

_ I'll have endolimbs by then, Aya. You really wanna go there?_

Aya smiled wolfishly at him. _They won't save you._

_ I'm game to find out if you are,_ he replied with a gentle smile. _Now if it's alright with you guys, you can start letting them in._

_ When I say so,_ Songa chided him.

After nearly two very enjoyable hours with friends and family, he got the bad part of it overwith. He joined the council in session from his bed, using a flat hologram projected at the foot of his bed, as Cybi sat on the side of his bed with her bionoid and Cyra on the other. He gave them another accounting of the meeting, and then told them at least parts of his escape, downplaying the parts that would make him look even more frightening to them than he did to himself. He also didn't tell them about E Chaio whispering to him, since they wouldn't understand that. "It just comes down to when we throw the swtich," Jason surmised. "I'm of a mind to ask to hold off a couple more days to see what they do. I think I scared them pretty badly," he said in a low, nearly emotionless voice as the memory of that washed over him. "We have about three days before we have to make a decision. And I know this sounds weird, but I'd like to give them the chance to do the right thing. If they have to die, I want it to be because of their own wrong choices, not just to get them out of the way."

"I think we can afford to hold off a couple of days," Assaba agreed. "They haven't completed the assembly of their fleets yet, so we have time."

"Have they contacted us while I was under?"

"Not them, but the Consortium has," Gau answered. "They want to open negotiations for a peace treaty. And ask for help."

"Help?"

"It seems they knew about your drives Jason. I don't know how, but they knew," Gau answered. "They want to negotiate our help evacuating their civilians from Andromeda. And that, at least, I find commendable. They're trying to save lives," he said respectfully. "They offered a peace treaty with their military if we transport their civilians to another galactic formation within the cluster. They don't want to send their people here, they want them somewhere the Syndicate can't find them," he explained. "Somewhere it would take the Syndicate decades to reach them."

He looked at Cyra. _[That's _our_ plan.]_

_ [It seems they had the same idea,]_ she noted.

_[It only makes sense, so it's not a big surprise it occurred to them,]_ Cybi added.

"The Consortium is the reason I had to reveal the drives," he admitted. "We found out they found out about the drives, because of their clairvoyants. They saw my ships doing translight jumps. I didn't want you to find out about them from them, so I revealed them myself. But we don't object to that peace treaty. We've been kicking around that very same idea to secure peace with the Consortium. Offer to send them somewhere far, far away where the Syndicate can't bother them and they can't bother us, and let them try to rebuild their civilization. Cyra, did Pete get to his destination?"

"He's there now, he arrived just twenty six hours ago," she nodded. "Scans so far look favorable."

"For what?" Gau asked.

"One my advance scout ships is scouting for a place for the Consortium to go," he replied. "They're in a galaxy outside of our cluster, G-112-171-B on our charts. We chose it because it would take the Consortium nearly twelve thousand years to jump back to our galaxy from there. If Pete finds the galaxy favorable, then we were going to offer to send the Consortium there. All of them. Permanently. They would cede Andromeda to the Syndicate and start over in a new galaxy."

"What's favorable?"

"Sufficient life-sustaining planets to support their population with a lack of spacefaring or sentient races for them to conquer," he replied. "My oath applies to the _Consortium_ as much as it does the Confederation. We can't get them there and allow them to conquer the indigenous civilizations, to enforce their wills on another. The oath of the Karinnes forbids it. If Pete finds that the galaxy meets our requirements, I was going to talk the council into letting me handle the negotiations with the Consortium, since I could offer them a way out of the trap that they're in. I know that won't sit well with some members of the council," he said, glancing at Sk'Vrae, "but it seemed the best way to go about it. It would get the Consortium completely out of the picture without bloodshed."

"We can discuss that today," Gau noted.

"Well, odds are I won't be there. In about an hour, I'll be undergoing the next procedure on these new arms," he told them. "They're going to encase them in a nutrient feeder system to promote the rapid growth of my flesh over the endolimbs. They have to sedate me for that, which is why I'm not in a bionoid now. Once that's done, most likely I'm just gonna abandon my body for the next few days and live in my bionoid. It beats sitting here in this bed, unable to so much as scratch my nose." Cyra reached over and did that, which made Cybi laugh. "Gee, thanks," he said caustically, which made her wink at him.

"If you could send us everything you have on that plan, we can look over it and add it to our discussions," Gau said.

"Sure, Cybi has it in her memory, she can send you the files," he replied, looking over at her.

"I just sent it to you, your Majesty," she confirmed. "It should be in your lectern computer now."

"I have it," he nodded. "I'll send this out to all council members, and I think a two hour recess to study it is in order," he decided.

The council did indeed recess for two hours, allowing him to cancel the hologram and lean back in his bed. _[Here's hoping they go for it,]_ he mused. _[Since I've been so busy the last couple of takirs, is the CBIM installation still on schedule?]_

_ [Tomorrow,]_ she replied. _[The core crystal will finish tempering in 19 hours. Siyhaa has already assigned the installation teams, and you're not on them.]_

_ [Bullshit am I not on them,]_ he communed forcefully. _[She boxed me out of being there for Cora's installation, no way in hell I'm missing a CBIM installation. Though, I won't get to be there in person,]_ he noted. _[But still, I'm not about to miss the birth of the newest member of my family. And if Siyhaa has a problem with that, she's going to look awfully silly hanging from the top of the 3D flagpole by her hooves, showing the entire world what she wears under her robes.]_

Cybi gave him an amused look. _[Such a meanie,]_ she teased.

_[This is _my_ planet, damn it. All of you live here by my whim,]_ he retorted airily. He had to laugh when both Cybi and Cyra slapped each of his shoulders in perfect unison. _[Well, I _suppose_ I can let you two stay, if only because you amuse me,]_ he communed grandly.

_ [Don't let him get away with that bullshit, Cybi,]_ Cyvanne injected.

_[He'd better be glad I don't have a bionoid there right now,]_ Cynna agreed cheekily.

_[Be nice, girls, he's had a rough couple of takirs. Let him recover, _then_ get him back,]_ Cylan suggested.

_[If he's stuck in that bed, he can't get away,]_ Coma noted lightly.

_[There's no sport in that,]_ Cyrsi observed.

_[I don't think this is about sport, Cyrsi,]_ Cora noted. _[Then again, Jason himself isn't very sporting. There's nothing wrong with cheating against a cheater.]_

"I'd say you're back home now, Jason," Cybi winked as she spoke aloud.

He had to laugh. "It sure sounds like it," he replied with a smile. "And you have no idea how happy that makes me."


End file.
